Failed Graft Prosecution of Former Israeli Premier Spurs Political Questions

Ehud Olmert, center, the former Israeli prime minister, left court last Tuesday after being acquitted of major corruption charges.Credit
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

JERUSALEM — In the summer of 2008, two weeks after Israeli prosecutors announced an expansion of their corruption investigation of Ehud Olmert, then the prime minister, a New Jersey woman contacted Israel’s attorney general and said that she believed she had some relevant information, according to court documents.

The Israeli public was still reeling from the revelations of Morris Talansky, a Long Island businessman who had testified that May, in an early deposition, about the tens of thousands of dollars he said he had given to Mr. Olmert over 13 years, mostly in cash stuffed into envelopes, a claim Mr. Olmert denied.

Under intense public and political pressure, Mr. Olmert, a former right-wing politician who had veered leftward and was involved in intensive negotiations with the Palestinians, announced his resignation that September, more than a year before he was charged.

After Mr. Olmert was acquitted last week of corruption charges in the two major episodes that led to his downfall, most public criticism was directed against the state attorney, Moshe Lador, who had staked his prestige on prosecuting Mr. Olmert. Mr. Lador has defended his actions, saying that “the state attorney’s office fulfilled its obligation” to the public and denying that it had forced Mr. Olmert out of office.

But the outcome of the trial has emboldened associates of Mr. Olmert’s, who have asserted that it was a weak case most likely instigated by right-wing political forces in Israel and encouraged by sympathetic American Jews.

Few people here suspect the state attorney of political motives, but Mr. Olmert’s aides and supporters say that Mr. Lador’s zealousness caused him to overlook what the court later found to be the “problematic” nature of central witnesses like the New Jersey woman, Rachel Moore, and Mr. Talansky.

“I do not want to speak about a conspiracy, because Olmert also does not believe in a conspiracy,” said a senior lawyer on Mr. Olmert’s defense team. “But there are some facts. Private investigators were going around Israel trying to get people to open criminal files against Olmert. A few people told us that they were offered money.”

Mr. Olmert’s associates spoke on the condition of anonymity because the legal troubles of the former prime minister are not over. He is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of breach of trust, the least serious of the charges he faced.

And he remains embroiled in another serious corruption case, in which he is charged with taking bribes in connection with the construction of a residential complex while he was the mayor of Jerusalem.

Mr. Olmert has not given any interviews since the court decision. But in an interview broadcast on CNN in early May, he spoke generally of having had “to fight against superior powers, including millions and millions of dollars that were transferred from this country,” meaning the United States, “by figures which were from the extreme right wing that were aimed to topple me as prime minister of Israel. There is no question about it.”

Asked for names, Mr. Olmert replied, “Next time.”

Ms. Moore, a mother of seven from East Windsor, N.J., has become a central figure in the Olmert saga for those trying to prove it was born of political motives. The newspaper Maariv, which is generally viewed as conservative-leaning, published a series of articles last week that drew attention to Ms. Moore’s role in the Olmert case. The author, Ben Caspit, an influential and often provocative commentator, has been harshly critical of Mr. Olmert in the past and wrote that he was “never part of his troupe.”

But of Ms. Moore, Mr. Caspit wrote, “This story clearly demonstrates the involvement of right-wing figures, political figures, unseen and dark forces who conspired to oust an incumbent prime minister of Israel from office, and found a faithful partner for that endeavor in the State Attorney’s Office.”

Ms. Moore came to Israel in 1995 and worked for a year and a half in Mr. Olmert’s office, helping with some travel matters when he was mayor of Jerusalem. She returned to the United States in 1998. Ten years later she read in a newspaper that Mr. Olmert was suspected of fraudulently billing multiple state and charitable agencies for the same flights when he was mayor and then as the minister of trade, using the extra money for personal trips and vacations. She contacted the Israeli authorities.

Photo

Morris Talansky, who had testified against Mr. Olmert.Credit
Michal Fattal/E.P.A.

Ms. Moore was the only witness who volunteered information against Mr. Olmert in what became known as the double-billing affair, but the judges wrote in their ruling that they found her to be “a witness whose credibility is in doubt.”

They added, “It cannot be ruled out that her testimony was influenced, or even motivated, by considerations that do not correspond with the duty to testify truthfully.”

According to the court, Ms. Moore did not handle payments related to Mr. Olmert’s travel and was in no position to know how much the flights cost or how much was paid. She told of a trip to China years before Mr. Olmert ever traveled there.

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Mr. Caspit made much of Ms. Moore’s acknowledgment that she had consulted with a rabbi, whom he described as an “extremist,” before meeting with Israeli police investigators. Mr. Caspit added that the rabbi, Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, who works at the Shalem Center, a conservative-leaning institute in Jerusalem, had “instructed her to lodge a complaint against Olmert.”

In their ruling, the judges noted that at the time that Ms. Moore approached the Israeli authorities, her husband was writing a blog that identified with the positions of the Israeli right and was severely critical of Mr. Olmert’s performance in security matters. The judges wrote that her testimony was in no way rejected because of her husband’s political opinions, but that it was “problematic” that she “hid the information” from investigators.

Others involved in the story tell it a different way.

Rabbi Lifshitz said in a telephone interview that Ms. Moore, a longtime acquaintance, had indeed called him but only to ask for a religious ruling on whether testifying against Mr. Olmert would constitute “lashon hara,” gossip or slanderous talk that is considered a sin in Jewish law.

Rabbi Lifshitz said that he was apolitical, and made a point of never mixing politics and Halakha, or Jewish law. “I told her that if you tell the truth,” he said, “it is not considered lashon hara.”

Reached by telephone in New Jersey, Ms. Moore declined to comment. But her American lawyer, Jeffrey A. Udell, utterly rejected any suggestion that his client had acted out of political motives.

“Ms. Moore made crystal clear in her testimony that her only motivation was to tell the truth,” he said.

“She had no agenda, was not ‘sent’ by anyone, and she answered the questions of the prosecutor and the defense to the best of her memory,” he said.

It seems that Ms. Moore became more deeply entwined in the case than she had originally intended — she had to be subpoenaed to testify.

In the end, Mr. Olmert’s bureau chief, Shula Zaken, was convicted of fraud and breach of trust in the double-billing affair. The court ruled that there was no evidence that Mr. Olmert knew the details of the billing or that any of the extra funds had been used for private travel. Ultimately, the court also found Mr. Talansky, from Woodsburgh, in Nassau County, to be a problematic witness whose testimony included statements that were incorrect, confused and “even false.”

The judges wrote that Mr. Talansky was an amiable man who loved Israel and deeply admired Mr. Olmert.

But an Olmert aide noted that Mr. Talansky had originally supported Mr. Olmert “as a rightist mayor of Jerusalem” and not as a prime minister offering concessions to the Palestinians.

Unlike Ms. Moore, Mr. Talansky did not approach the Israeli authorities. Instead, during a visit to Jerusalem the police came knocking on his door. The identity of the person who tipped off the Israeli investigators about Mr. Talanksy has never been revealed.

A version of this article appears in print on July 16, 2012, on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Failed Graft Prosecution Of Former Israeli Premier Spurs Political Questions. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe